Typically vowels are omitted from words and some sounds are misrepresented such as /w/ is represented with a Y or /p/ is represented with a B. Children begin to use letters to represent whole words and move to recognizing individual sounds within words and representing the sounds with letters.Įarly writing in this stage is also called semiphonetic spelling because only some of the sounds are represented in the word.
When children enter school, more formal instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics begins (kindergarten to second grade or ages 5-8). This Reading Mama Emergent Reading Activities –.Literacy Activities that Highlight Emergent and Beginning Literacy Development.Promoting Preschoolers’ Emergent Writing from MAENYC –.For example, they will use the first letter of their name or M for mom and D for dad. Letter/Sound recognition – For important or commonly used letters, children will use the letter appropriately.Forms of letters – By the end of the stage, scribbles turn into recognizable letters often the upper case.Some begin to align their writing horizontally.
Directionality – Writing left to right and top to bottom.Difference between writing and drawing – When asked to draw or write, children are able to tell the difference between picture drawing and writing.Some features that children begin to recognize are: The movement to the next stage happens when children learn the alphabetic principle that letters represent sounds in a systematic way and that words are made up of letters.Ĭhildren show that they recognize several conventions of writing during this stage and teachers need to recognize the features children know and build from them. Uppercase letters tend to dominate this stage. In the early part of the stage, the writing may be scattered across the page, but toward the end of this stage, children begin to understand directionality and write left to right and top to bottom (See Image 1.1). Often only the child can “read” the writing. At this stage, children don’t recognize the sound/symbol relationship and are generally imitating the process of writing. Pre-school-aged children (ages 3-6) write with scribbles, random letters, and letter-like forms. This sample chapter has great examples of each spelling stage with an additional explanation of developmental spelling. This website includes a table that demonstrates typical writing at each stage from teacher Michele A. This is a dramatic shift of understanding spelling instruction from what many of our children’s parents experienced in school and it is important to educate families about the process and matching instruction. When teachers consider spelling as a developmental process, the stages of word knowledge are predictable, but the timing of movement through the stages can vary greatly for each child. Understanding a child’s developmental stage and building from it provides targeted instruction in a child’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and increases a child’s word knowledge and conventional spelling. Although teachers and parents are sometimes concerned that invented spelling reinforces spelling errors, research has shown that, with instruction, invented spelling progresses toward conventional spelling and by encouraging children to write with their “best guesses”, they are more motivated to write will write about a wider range of topics and will experiment with words.Īs children use their best judgment to write words based on patterns they know, it shows their phonemic awareness (recognition of sounds) phonics knowledge (sound/symbol relationship) and phonology (patterns).
This invented spelling is an important part of developing as a reader and writer and research has shown that children move through five stages of word knowledge that include both specific features of words and the order in which children learn these features (Gentry & Gillet, 1993 Read, 1975 Templeton, 2011). When children become orthographers, they don’t just memorize words, which has been the traditional method of spelling instruction, but rather they learn to recognize patterns and rules of words. Orthography is the study of the correct spelling of words according to established usage. Beginning writers use letter and word approximations (scribbles), but with repeated exposure to words through read alouds, dictated stories, and phonemic awareness and phonics work, children’s approximations become closer to conventional spelling. When children are surrounded by print, they often try to imitate what they see. Milne – Winnie-the-Pooh Spelling as a Developmental Process It’s good spelling but it Wobbles,Īnd the letters get in the wrong places.”Ī.A.